Azure DevTest Labs: Share a public IP address across lab VMs

Published date: January 24, 2017

A recently released feature in Azure DevTest Labs enables lab VMs to share the same public IP address. When you need lab VMs that you can access through the Internet, this capability can help you reduce cost and avoid exceeding the public IP address quota in your Azure subscription.

The feature is enabled by default for all the new labs created after this release, as indicated in Advanced settings > Network options for VM creation:

After a VM is created with a shared public IP address, DevTest Labs automatically adds the VM to a load balancer and assigns a port number. The experience of connecting to the VMs is the same as before. For Windows VMs, users can simply use the Connect button to access the VM. For Linux VMs, users can SSH to the VM by using the connection address and the port number listed in the Essentials section.

For existing labs, you can enable this option through Configuration and policies > Virtual Network settings: select ENABLE SHARED PUBLIC IP for a selected subnet after picking a virtual network from the list. You can also disable this option in any labs, if you don't want to share a public IP address across lab VMs.

Please try it today and let us know what you think about it! If you have an idea for how to make it work better, submit your feedback (or vote for others) at the Azure DevTest Labs feedback forum.